Here we are in an ever advancing technological age and I find myself having to rely on camping lights and batteries for a CD player to keep my classes going when the power goes down.
But by a strange mental leap sideways it started me thinking about what shapes our identity and our culture.
Is our personal identity the same as our supposed group identity? If for example you are a green person, who has a certain belief system, is married to a person of the opposite sex and has one and a half children do you all share a group identity. Is this different from the purple people who have no children only a dog and do not eat meat?
For a long time I have wondered what an identity is – besides that piece of card you get at Home Affairs to prove you are someone. Is it a fixed identity we have for life? Are we born with and have our identity stamped into our genes like some teenagers squashed into their jeans? Or does our identity change as we move though life, circumstances and different cultural environments. Is where you were born or where your parents were born important? And to whom? And Why?
And having mentioned Culture, that word that means different things to different people, do we also have special cultural identities?
And then we come to the work place?
I was shocked one day when a one time friend told me he was defined by his work. It was who he was. Does our work identify us? No wonder there are so many confused people walking around trying to establish an identity for themselves.
My suggestion is to spend more time trying to be human and humane, kinder and more constructive in your thinking and your actions. I think this is the hardest to achieve because there seem to be so many angry, dissatisfied people who are looking to blame someone for something and therefore not looking to find a constructive way to solve whatever their problems might be.
Having said that I am seriously thinking of finding a big tent and going off to perform in the bush. After all I have the camping flood lights, the batteries and our culture of braai vleis and it will solve the problem of electricity down time, insurance increases, rates and taxes and all those multitude of mundane and expensive facts of life that affect us in our pursuit of a first world existence in a third world economy. Hang on I have a very large tent so what is stopping me? Fear of the unknown, the path untravelled, strangers by the wayside. Isn’t that that what inhibits most of us FEAR?